Great potion which is fully justified and almost poetic in its final results. Taken to quell the flames of emotion, when they can be subdued no longer it bursts into flames. Awesome!

Since most have already taken the potion, the bursting into flames of their neighbors may not bother them too much. Until finally their own fear of it may overtake them and they burst into flames. Crazy countryside where everybody is a ticking time bomb with an unknown amount of time on the clock. Crazy.

Now of course, the potion would be after some time metabolized... the question is, how long will it take, with a potion designed to last long? Months, years? And who is safe from his own emotions for such a long time?

A very neat and destructive creation, and a first submission even! Welcome, WIM40. Enjoy your stay. Go to Comment

Well, first of all welcome to the Citadel, VIM40! Way to jump right in and join a quest.

On to the submission...

Wow. I read this sat back and had to think about it for a few seconds. So what we have here is, a potion that temporarily dampens all emotions (particularly, a person's passionate emotional "investments"),the effects of which last 1-4 weeks, and after which, causes the pent up emotions/frustrations to manifest into an actual flame, which erupts from said person, immolating completely and irrevocably a small localized area of effect.

Yep, i can get behind this stuff. So many ways to play around with this substance, and ideas for in-game, comical (and deadly) scenarios involving this substance and its uses, flood my brain as I write this.

A few questions, 1. How easily is this stuff made? (or, how common are necessary ingredients?). 2. Is there anything that can help determine how long a person's vested emotions are dampened? (or purely random 1-4 weeks?)

I really like this. Some of the little details, like people feeling no pain as they immolate, but only an outpouring of pent-up emotion, rings a perfect tone. This is a short but fully presented concept, yet really gets the mind spinning. Kudos.

Love the tagline by the way! ...a solution for those too invested in an ideal :) (sub curb for curve though) Go to Comment

This is an excellent idea and I enjoy the flippant tone of the piece. These sorts of narrative devices have a long tradition in the old morality tales of the middleages and the disturbing fables used to scare children into obeidence. The game uses of these are endless.

A PC could ingest this and then have the challenge of not overeacting to things. The Passion Purge could be a very useful hammer for the GM who wants to force a player to explore a different emotion or a character they want to blow up.

The PCs could have to escort a person of importance (or royal child if you are feeling very dark that day) who has a tendcey towards indignation. The villians could then find a way to get Mr. McGuffin to ingest the Passion Purge. Now the PCs have to keep him safe and calm.

The placebo effect of this thing is also something that could be explored with a light hand. Passion purge could be used to expose the realtive shallowness of activists. The so called burning hearts could be fed an exiler very much like passion purge and once they believe they have ingested the passion purge they simply shrug off the cause of the endangered flame fowl or the Holy Firestick registration act.

Finally there is a suicide bomber angle, which is perhaps best left unexplored. But a fatalistic army could ingest the passion purge before entering battle and then, god's willing, hold back their rage until the enemy is upon them. It would also make the army easier to manage until the time of battle, assuming your seargents were easy with the lash.

I do feel that the use of this is limited to historical fantasy setting. The item could not be used in any setting that has an internet or similar system. The surest way to destory a city would be spike the water system and give everybody free internet. The conflictual attitudes, the superserious logic, cultural narrowness and the anomyous arrogance of chat rooms, message boards and massive multiplayer games would no doubt boil the blood all those on the PP.

This is an excellent submission regardless of how many you have submitted before. Go to Comment

As for the duration, perhaps it is more of a function of how strong the dampened passions were. Someone very passive might be able to go longer without exploding, since they didn't really have a driving passion. Go to Comment

An ingenious invention, without a doubt, and perfect for a dystopian fantasy session, much like the series of games I'm planning to run which mix magic and tech. In this setting, the two main sides are based off of Communist China and NATO/ the UN, but there are numerous smaller, third-world nations between the two belligerents who would pay top dollar for a product like this. One angle might be that the players are working fro the Covert Actions Directorate (pretty much the CIA), and they're tracing a shipment of this potion in order to assassinate some enemy leaders or something. Or, if you're feeling REALLY grimdark, the player characters might actually be assigned to administer the stuff secretly to a rebel leader.

Gather the components should be easy, it's the magical evocation that'll require a very powerful magician or a joint effort among group of skilled spell casters. I like Valadaar's idea of the duration being dependent on the intensity of the drinker's passion. Still, it could be just a random variable like a 1d4 where a person who holds out the longest releases an even more powerful combustion.

Haha, I love your ideas. I had actually thought about the suicide bomber angle, a tactic often used by rebellious peasants with little resources to fight with. Thank you for the comment, it is very much appreciated. Go to Comment

Justified Curses

Magical curses are rarely cast, as if cast on someone for fun or purely maliciously and the person cursed has not done something seriously wrong, it tends to ricochet back on the curser. Therefore the few who do get cursed are shunned by most people as genuinely guilty,and few will help them.